


Energy of Life, Equality in All

by VibrantNeonBlack



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Energybender Korra, Equalists Win, F/F, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, equalist Asami, for now
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-12
Updated: 2017-10-12
Packaged: 2019-01-16 08:47:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12339375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VibrantNeonBlack/pseuds/VibrantNeonBlack
Summary: At age 4, Korra's world suddenly grew brighter.  At age 6, Asami's world grew darker.Ten years later, they learn that hard work isn't always enough to get what you want most in life, and compromises must sometimes be made.Five years after that, the two will meet for the first time in the aftermath of a successful Equalist revolution in Republic City.  But even with her extraordinary abilities, how can Korra hope to undo all the damage done by Amon and his army?  And how can Asami cope with the pain she helped inflict to achieve victory?





	Energy of Life, Equality in All

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is a rather ambitious story that I've been meaning to write for some time now. No idea how long it will be or even how frequently I will be able to update. I have several projects going on at once, but if this gets a good reaction out of people, I'll definitely be focusing most of my energy on it. So I do hope you enjoy. And don't worry, the story will grow more indepth after the prologue.

When she was four years old, Korra asked her parents an unusual question.

“Papa, how come you’re more glowy than me and Mama?”

Of course, Tonraq and Senna had no answer for such a question.  Neither one of them were glowing, and trying to get their daughter to explain resulted in a shrug and “You’re just more glowy,” as a response.

Thinking the whole thing some kind of game the little girl had made up, they didn’t dwell on the matter.  However, the subject came up again a few days later as the trio were walking through the village.  As they walked, Korra began pointing out all the people they passed by who were ‘more glowy like Papa’ and which ones were ‘less glowy like Mama’.

Senna remained confused, but the more Korra went on, the more Tonraq began to notice a pattern:  All of the ‘more glowy’ people were benders like him, while all of the ‘less glowy’ people were non-benders like his wife.

Intrigued, but still unsure of what this could mean, the two decided to bring their daughter to the most knowledgable bender they knew:  Master Katara.

Tonraq’s suspicion was confirmed as soon as they entered Katara’s home when Korra, never one to shy away from strangers, ran right up to the elderly woman and loudly proclaimed her to be ‘the most glowiest one of all!’.  If Katara were at all thrown by the random statement, she hid it well behind a small laugh and a pat on the child’s head.

Tonraq explained to Katara the matter of Korra seeing people glowing and the connection he had made between the benders and non-benders they had passed by on the way.  But trying to get Korra to describe the glow to Katara was more difficult.  To the  four year old’s mind, a glow was just a glow, and further pressing of the issue only resulted in a frustrated pout.  Thankfully, Katara seemed to grasp the situation a little more than the parents did.  So, taking Korra by the hand, she led her into her personal medical room, which was filled with books, scrolls and tapestries.  

As she sifted through a stack of papers, Korra came to the conclusion that Katara was ‘a cool old lady’, and thus decided to regale her with stories, beginning with her successful hunting and capture of a polar bear-puppy a few months before.  Katara couldn’t help but smile at the pride in the little girl’s voice when describing her genius plan of ‘throwing a fur over it while it was sleeping’, only to then crawl underneath to pet it when it started to cry.

Korra was about to start another story about how she and Naga, who was now her ferocious attack dog, had successfully invaded the ‘No Girls Allowed’ snow fort that several young boys had built, when Katara found what she was looking for.  She handed Korra a small chart of a human body covered in many small circles and lines traveling throughout.  It took Korra several moments of looking back and forth between Katara and the chart before happily announcing that the circles and lines were the same parts that made everyone glowy.

After that, the two returned to Tonraq and Senna, where Katara gave them a quick explanation of what she had discovered.  They were still a bit confused, but Katara assured them that nothing was wrong and, in fact, that their daughter was destined for amazing things and they would understand soon enough.

That understanding finally hit three months later, when Korra threw a temper tantrum and accidentally set the house’s floor pelt on fire.

===

 

At age six, Asami Sato asked her father a painful question.

"Why did Mommy have to die?"

Hiroshi had stared down at her, pain still fresh on his face despite the funeral having been hours ago.  In his mental state, he couldn't even attempt to make a soft of diplomatic answer for his little girl.

"Benders," he told her.  "Greedy, evil benders."

It had happened a few nights before:  Hiroshi was working late at the office, and his wife and child were at home.  Asami had intended to wait up for him to come home, but had lost her valiant fight with sleep.  As her mother was placing her in bed, she heard a crash from downstairs.  Assuming that a maid had knocked something over, she investigated, only to discover that two men, one of whom was obviously an earth bender, had burrowed their way into the house from below and were in the process of looting whatever valuables they could find.

Fortunately, the noise had also alerted the Sato's family house guard, who instructed her to call the police while he dealt with the intruders.  However, as soon as he'd run in and she turned in the other direction, she was met by a third burglar exiting another room.  Before she could flee, he pushed her into the room with the others to prevent her from calling for help.

As it happened, the moment she hit the floor was the exact same moment that a stray fireball thrown by the other thief collided with a gas-powered furnace against the wall, igniting it and instantly killing everyone in the room.  The final thief at the doorway was blown backward, but managed to collect himself enough to make a getaway through the hole his associate had made.

And that was the scene that Hiroshi returned home to:  A smoldering wall of his mansion, a maid clutching his little girl to her chest, no sign of his loving wife and no answers as to why.

It was later revealed by the police that the thieves were three young men hoping to get in the good graces with the Triple Threats, and that the surviving member had likely fled the city in his failure.

Asami, of course, couldn't comprehend most of this.  All she knew was that her mother had been taken away by bad men.  Bad men who, as her father would later tell her, were all benders.  But why would benders want to hurt them?  Did being benders make them bad people?  Asami knew kids her age that were benders; were they bad?  Would they grow up to hurt people like the ones who hurt her mommy?

Nobody seemed to have answers for these questions, not even her daddy, and he was the smartest person ever.  But when she asked him, he just gave her a sad look and sent her away so he could focus on his work.

Hiroshi stopped being happy after that, and even though Asami knew why, she wasn't sure what to do about it.  But she did make a promise one night as she closed her eyes to sleep:  that she would find a way to make sure no other non-benders would have to be afraid of benders trying to hurt them anymore.

Little did she know, her father had already made a similar vow.  And unlike his daughter, he knew exactly how he would do it.

===

 

At age 14, Korra came to a conclusion she had long tried to deny.

She was the worst Avatar EVER!

And while that probably sounded like the exaggeration of a temperamental teenager, she was confident that the facts spoke for themselves.

Waterbending?  Subpar.

Fire and Earth?  Practically non-existent.

Air?  Completely non-existent.

Avatar State?  Never.

Communing with past selves?  Not a peep.

She'd been so desperate to find something, anything, that could prove she had what it took to be a bender and the Avatar, that she had even attempted to blood bend one of her White Lotus guardians during a full moon.  It hadn't worked at all, but that didn't stop Katara from giving her the mother of all 'I'm not mad, just disappointed' guilt-trips when she found out about it.

The frustration of her lack of progress, combined with the ten years she'd dedicated to it, all while being hidden away in a guarded compound where she was never without some form of supervision, took a bad toll on the young girl, and she began lashing out against her teachers, her guardians and even her parents.

It wasn't fair.  From the stories that Katara had told her in the past, Aang hadn't even wanted to be the Avatar as a child, and yet he still managed to master every aspect of it before even reaching Korra's age.  And he didn't even have masters available at any given time to teach him like she did.  Most of his teachers had just been kids his own age.

But Korra DID want it.  She wanted it more than anything in the world.  The day she found out she was the Avatar had made her even more ecstatic than the day her parents had relented in letting her keep Naga.  Even as a four year old, it was a dream come true; like finding out she was actually a princess or something, only a thousand times cooler.

So why was it so hard?  Being the bridge between the physical and spiritual worlds should have made all this stuff come naturally, right?  But it didn't.  And even if it took a lot of hard work to see results, that would be fine.  But it had been ten years now, and her bending still was barely comparable to the skills of children half her age.

The only thing she had was her strange ability to see chi, something that not even the previous Avatars had been capable of.  And even then, so what?  It's not like it was actually useful for anything, so who cared if she was the only one who could do it?

But, if there was any single positive thing to take from it all, it was that despite her lack of bending talent, she was at least physically strong.  Being confined to the compound, there were no other kids her age to play with, which meant that a large portion of her days were spent in the training room, under the belief that maybe making her body stronger would also make her bending stronger.  So far that hadn't bore fruit, but her ability to flip a full-grown man over her head with little effort was still something to be admired.  And when she combined that with her knowledge of earth, water and fire bending fighting styles, she found that she could still fight on par with her teachers using nothing but her bare hands.

Naturally, it was Katara who suggested she use that to her advantage.  Downplay your weaknesses while accentuating your strengths, she'd say.  Everything else would surely come to her in time if she just remained patient.

Fine then.  If her destiny was to be the first Avatar to bring balance with her bare hands instead of with the elements, then she was damn sure going to be the most badass bendless Avatar of all time!

===

 

At age 16, Asami came to a conclusion she'd long tried to deny.

Maybe her father really was right about benders.

Ever since the death of her mother ten years before, Asami had tried her best to keep an open mind about such things.  She knew, of course, that not all benders were evil; that was just as silly as believing that all non-benders were innocent.  But the more time passed, the more she began to notice a very uncomfortable truth.

No, the majority of benders were not outright malicious to non-benders.

Most of them simply didn't care.

They didn't care that every major crime syndicate in the city was run by benders who targeted non-benders almost exclusively.  They didn't care that when those criminals were caught by the police, they could just buy their way back onto the streets with absolutely no punishment for what they'd done.  They didn't care that non-benders had no spokesperson on the city council.  They didn't care that the numerous people living homeless in The Dragon Flats were almost entirely non-benders, or that the reason why those people were in such dire straits was because even in a huge and prosperous place like Republic City they still struggled to find well-paying jobs that benders couldn't do better than them.

Or at least, if they did care, it wasn't enough to actually do anything about it.

It was truly infuriating; knowing that the biggest problem getting in the way of bender/non-bender equality wasn't in dealing with the criminals and corrupt officials themselves, but rather in trying to convince the general bending populous that there actually was a problem to begin with!  The Equalist movement had grown bigger in the last four years than Asami could have even hoped, but what good did it do if after countless rallies, charity events, legal propositions and even picketing outside government buildings people still refused to admit that the problem was as bad as it sounded?  Far too many people seemed to be of the opinion that if they personally weren't being negatively affected by the inequality of the system, then it simply wasn't their problem to fix.

And even when they did find a sympathetic ear, such as that of Airmaster Tenzin or police chief Lin Beifong, there was still little they could do thanks to the silver tongue of that smug, self-serving rat-lemming Tarrlok and others like him.

Every consecutive failure to change public opinion took its toll, not just on Asami but the entire movement.  In recent months, they had actually started losing supporters, thinking the whole thing a lost cause.  But the loss of overall morale only spurred Asami to try even harder.  She would not, could not allow her Mother's death to be for nothing; just another death on top of hundreds of others to be swept under the rug by people who couldn't even understand why she was fighting so hard.

The struggle bred frustration, which slowly bled into anger.  She began wondering if they were going about things the wrong way?  The criminals and the corrupt certainly weren't listening to peace.  Would they listen to violence?

But no.  Just the thought of that made the girl's heart ache as she envisioned what her mother would say over hearing such a thing.

But there had to be something else they could do.  Not outright violence, but surely some form of self-defense?  Something that would make the Triads think twice before targeting the weak, helpless non-benders, at the very least?

Her father liked to call her his little braintrust for the random ideas she would suggest for his upcoming Future Industries board meetings.

Maybe it was time to put that braintrust to use for something a little different...

===

 

At age 16, Korra's 'useless' gift, her chi-seeing eyes, suddenly became a lot less useless.  And for the first time, she truly started to feel like someone worthy of the title 'Avatar'.

===

 

At age 18, Asami discovered her father's hidden factory and, when he offered his hand to her, she made a decision that would affect the lives of everyone in the city.

===

 

At age 18, Korra leaned against the sleeping body of Naga, staring out at the ocean, wondering if anyone in the world was still awaiting news of her existence, or if the world even held a place for someone like her at all.

===

 

At age 20, Asami was introduced to a mysterious man in a mask.  She had never felt more intimidated, and she could only hope that the bending elite would feel the same.

===

 

At age 19, Korra was still looking for her purpose in the world.

===

 

At age 21, Asami accomplished hers, when the Equalists took Republic City.

 


End file.
